Inspiring photos from the worldwide Uproot the System youth climate protest

Fridays for Future, the grassroots climate movement, held its first global in-person strike since the pandemic on September 24.
By Anna Iovine on September 25, 2021


Greta Thunberg and other demonstrators during Fridays for Future on September 24, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. Credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek Via Getty Images

On Friday, grassroots climate movement Fridays for Future led its first global strike since the pandemic hit: #UprootTheSystem, a name and hashtag meant to bring about an intersectional discussion about climate change.

Fridays for Future began in 2018 when then-15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a school strike for climate. Thunberg's protest quickly sparked a global movement, and — fast forward to yesterday — Uproot the System was worldwide, with estimated 1,400 events in over 80 countries.


Uproot the System encourages all of us to center MAPA, or "most affected people and areas." This includes indigenous people and regions labeled the "Global South" (parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania).

"Without listening to MAPA, embracing intersectionality, and uprooting this system," warned Fridays for Future in their Uproot The System blog post, "we have no hope of stopping the climate crisis."

Thousands of young people around the globe met the call on Friday. Thunberg herself attended the Berlin protest. Here are photos from the international strike:

People during Fridays for Future demonstration in Rome, Italy. Credit: Andrea Ronchini/NurPhoto Via Getty Images

Children in London, United Kingdom for Fridays for Future. Credit: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures Via Getty Images

Activists in Utrecht, Netherlands dressed like politicians are seen setting fire on a circle representing mother Earth during the demonstration. Credit: Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/LightRocket Via Getty Images

A protester makes a gesture during the demonstration in Warsaw, Poland. Credit: Attila Husejnow/SOPA Images/LightRocket 

Participants seen holding a banner at the protest in New York, New York. Credit: Erik McGregor/LightRocket Via Getty Images

VUB led Science publication shows how climate change is disproportionally affecting children

The kids aren’t alright

Peer-Reviewed Publication

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL

International research led by Prof. Wim Thiery of the VUB research group BCLIMATE shows that children are to face disproportionate increases in lifetime extreme event exposure – especially in low-income countries. Under current climate policy, newborns across the globe will on average face seven times more scorching heatwaves during their lives than their grandparents. In addition, they will on average live through 2.6 times more droughts, 2.8 times as many river floods, almost three times as many crop failures, and twice the number of wildfires as people born 60 years ago.

“Our results highlight a severe threat to the safety of young generations and call for drastic emission reductions to safeguard their future.” says Thiery, climate scientist at VUB and lead author of the study.

The Fridays for Future movement led by the world’s youth has drastically increased awareness around the importance of climate change mitigation for future generations. Next to school strikes and protest marches, young people are now also suing their governments, for instance for violating their fundamental rights under the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

First study to bridge climate science and demography  

Scientifically, aspects of climate change like droughts or heatwaves are often studied by comparing different time windows or discrete levels of warming. However, this ruling paradigm in climate and impact research has so far not quantified how younger generations will experience a different climate change burden.  Current research therefore insufficiently grasps how the climate change burden differs across generations and countries.

Bridging between climate science and demography, the international research team now for the first time quantified lifetime exposure to droughts, heatwaves, crop failures, river floods, tropical cyclones, and wildfires. They computed lifetime exposure for every generation born between 1960 and 2020, and this for every country in the world and for every global warming scenario between today’s 1°C and 3.5°C above pre-industrial. To this end, the team generated an unprecedented collection of climate change impact simulations and combined these with future global temperature trajectories and demographic information on life expectancy, population density, and cohort size.

The results show that for a 3°C global warming pathway, a 6-year old in 2020 will experience twice as many wildfires and tropical cyclones, 3 times more river floods, 4 times more crop failures, 5 times more droughts, and 36 times more heatwaves relative to a reference person living under pre-industrial climate conditions. Under a 3.5°C warming scenario, children born in 2020 will even experience 44 times more heatwaves.

At and above 1.5°C of warming, lifetime exposure to heatwaves, crop failures, droughts, and river floods for people born after 1980 is unmatched by pre-industrial climate conditions.

“This basically means that people younger than 40 today will live an unprecedented life even under the most stringent climate change mitigation scenarios”, says Thiery.

Regional differences

Behind these global numbers hide important regional variations. Young generations in low-income countries will face by far the strongest increases with a more than fivefold increase in overall lifetime extreme event exposure. While 53 million children born in Europe and Central Asia since 2016 will experience about four times more extreme events under current pledges, 172 million children of the same age in sub-Saharan Africa face an almost sixfold increase in lifetime extreme event exposure, and even 50 times more heatwaves.

“The combined rapid growth in population and lifetime extreme event exposure highlights a disproportionate climate change burden for young generations in the Global South”, adds Thiery. “And we even have strong reasons to think that our calculations underestimate the actual increases that young people will face”.

Youth summit and COP26

With the UNFCCC Youth Summit running from 28 – 30 September in Milan and with COP26 upcoming in Glasgow end of October, international climate negotiations are gaining critical momentum.

“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C instead of following current policy pledges substantially reduces the intergenerational burden for extreme heatwaves, wildfires, crop failures, droughts, tropical cyclones, and river floods,” says Prof. Joeri Rogelj, climate change expert at Imperial College London and co-author of the study. “The results of the study published in Science and the accompanying report curated by the NGO Save The Children therefore highlight the utmost need to ramp up ambitions and embark on immediate action.”

“Our results underline the sheer importance of the Paris Agreement to protect young generations around the world,” adds Thiery. “If we manage to drastically reduce our emissions in the coming years, we can still avoid the worst consequences for children worldwide. At the same time, a sobering message for the youth in low-income countries emerges, where incredibly challenging extreme events are robustly projected, even under the most stringent of climate action futures.”

Contact

Wim Thiery

wim.thiery@vub.be

+32 485 70 80 18

Notes to editors

Link to Science paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi7339

Link to Save The Children Report: https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/library/born-climate-crisis-why-we-must-act-now-secure-childrens-rights  

The study was accomplished by researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), ETH Zurich, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Imperial College London, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Climate Analytics, Humboldt University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), MeteoSwiss, East China Normal University, Zhejiang University, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL), The Cyprus Institute, University of Liège, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, University of Nottingham, National Institute for Environmental Studies Japan, Goethe University Frankfurt, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), Universidad Pablo de Olavide, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, Technical University of Crete, China Agricultural University, University of Vienna, Zhejiang University, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon.

DOI

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi7339 

How climate change is making inequality worse, especially for children

Children born in high-income countries will experience twice as many extreme climate events as their grandparents, new research suggests.

But for children in low-income countries, it will be worse. They will see three times as many, say researchers at the University of Brussels.

The BBC’s population reporter Stephanie Hegarty has been looking at how climate change is already making poverty worse.

CATTLE FARTS

Stanford-led research reveals potential of an overlooked climate change solution

Analyses lay out a blueprint for speeding development of atmospheric removal and modeling how the approach could improve human health and have an outsized effect on reducing future peak temperatures.

BY ROB JORDAN
Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
SEPTEMBER 26, 2021

Earlier this month, President Biden urged other countries to join the U.S. and European Union in a commitment to slashing methane emissions. Two new Stanford-led studies could help pave the way by laying out a blueprint for coordinating research on methane removal technologies, and modeling how the approach could have an outsized effect on reducing future peak temperatures.

Agricultural operations, such as this feedlot at the Harris Ranch in
California, are among the largest sources of human-caused methane emissions. 

(Image credit: Getty Images)

The analyses, published Sept. 27 in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, reveal that removing about three years-worth of human-caused emissions of the potent greenhouse gas would reduce global surface temperatures by approximately 0.21 degrees Celsius while reducing ozone levels enough to prevent roughly 50,000 premature deaths annually. The findings open the door to direct comparisons with carbon dioxide removal – an approach that has received significantly more research and investment – and could help shape national and international climate policy in the future.

“The time is ripe to invest in methane removal technologies,” said Rob Jackson, lead author on the new research agenda paper and senior author on the modeling study. Jackson is the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor of Energy and Environment in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.
The case for methane removal

The relative concentration of methane has grown more than twice as fast as that of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Removing methane from the atmosphere could reduce temperatures even faster than carbon dioxide removal alone because methane is 81 times more potent in terms of warming the climate over the first 20 years after its release, and about 27 times more potent over a century. Methane removal also improves air quality by decreasing the concentration of tropospheric ozone, exposure to which causes an estimated one million premature deaths annually worldwide due to respiratory illnesses.

Graph shows globally averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance determined from marine surface sites since 1983. (Image credit: NOAA)

Unlike carbon dioxide, the bulk of methane emissions are human-driven. Primary culprits include agricultural sources such as livestock, which emit methane in their breath and manure, and rice fields, which emit methane when flooded. Waste disposal and fossil fuel extraction also contribute substantial emissions. Natural sources of methane, including soil microbes in wetlands, account for the remaining 40 percent of global methane emissions. They further complicate the picture because some of them, such as thawing permafrost, are projected to increase as the planet warms.

While development of methane removal technologies will not be easy, the potential financial rewards are big. If market prices for carbon offsets rise to $100 or more per ton this century, as predicted by most relevant assessment models, each ton of methane removed from the atmosphere could then be worth more than $2,700.
Envisioning methane removal’s impacts

The modeling study uses a new model developed by the United Kingdom’s national weather service (known as the UK Met Office) to examine methane removal’s potential impacts while accounting for its shorter lifetime than carbon dioxide – a key factor because some of the methane removed would have disappeared anyway. The researchers created a set of scenarios by varying either the amount removed or the timing of removal to generalize their results over a wide range of realistic future emissions pathways.

Under a high emissions scenario, the analysis showed that a 40 percent reduction in global methane emissions by 2050 would lead to a temperature reduction of approximately 0.4 degrees Celsius by 2050. Under a low emissions scenario where temperature peaks during the 21st century, methane removal of the same magnitude could reduce the peak temperature by up to 1 degree Celsius.

“This new model allows us to better understand how methane removal alters warming on the global scale and air quality on the human scale,” said modeling study lead author and research agenda coauthor Sam Abernethy, a PhD student in applied physics who works in Jackson’s lab.
From research to development

The path to achieving these climate and air quality improvements remains unclear. To bring it into focus, the research agenda paper compares and contrasts aspects of carbon dioxide and methane removal, describes a range of technologies for methane removal and outlines a framework for coordinating and accelerating its scale-up. The framework would help facilitate more accurate analysis of methane removal factors ranging from location-specific simulations to potential interactions with other climate change mitigation approaches.

Methane is challenging to capture from air because its concentration is so low, but burgeoning technologies – such as a class of crystalline materials called zeolites capable of soaking up the gas – hold the promise of a solution, according to the researchers. They argue for increased research into these technologies’ cost, efficiency, scaling and energy requirements, potential social barriers to deployment, co-benefits and possible negative by-products.

“Carbon dioxide removal has received billions of dollars of investments, with dozens of companies formed,” said Jackson. “We need similar commitments for methane removal.”


Jackson is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy and chairman of the Global Carbon Project. Coauthors of the research agenda paper include Josep Canadell of the Global Carbon Project; Matteo Cargnello, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, Steven Davis and Chaopeng Hong of the University of California at Irvine; Sarah Féron, a postdoctoral fellow in Earth system science at Stanford at the time of the research; Sabine Fuss of Humboldt Universität in Germany; Alexander Heyer and Hannah Rhoda, PhD students in chemistry at Stanford; and Edward Solomon, the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford and professor of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Maxwell Pisciotta and Jennifer Wilcox of the University of Pennsylvania; H. Damon Matthews of Concordia University in Montreal; Renaud de Richter of Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier in France; Kirsten Zickfeld of Simon Fraser University in Canada. Coauthors of both papers include Fiona O’Connor and Chris Jones of the Met Office Hadley Centre.

Both papers were funded by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment’s Environmental Venture Projects program, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Joint UK BEIS/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme. The paper led by Sam Abernethy was also funded by the Stanford Data Science Scholars Program and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Crescendo Project.

To read all stories about Stanford science, subscribe to the biweekly Stanford Science Digest.

GREENWASHING

'Carbon Footprint' and 'Net Zero' Don't Mean What You Think

ILLUSTRATION: MICHELLE URR

Words that imply strong emission reduction policies have adopted slippery meanings intended to imply companies are doing more to reduce emissions than they actually are.

By Audrey Carleton

By Aaron Gordon

20.9.21

Almost every day, Motherboard reporters receive press releases from companies and governments large and small boasting of some new effort to reduce emissions. While it is obviously a good thing these entities—or, at least, their PR departments—are thinking about their environmental impacts, we've also noticed an unfortunate trend. These releases routinely misuse and abuse basic climate change concepts. In some cases, they even introduce new and misleading terms by slapping "green" or "eco" in front of some pollutant. 

You've probably heard many of these terms before: carbon neutral, net zero, zero emissions. These terms sound simple, even self-explanatory. But the basic concepts they express are laden with complexities. And by getting repeated in the media without being fully defined, these terms have adopted slippery meanings, a slipperiness very much intended to imply companies and governments are doing more to reduce emissions than they actually are. Not all of these cases fit the traditional definition of "greenwashing"—in which companies express concerns about the environment while doing little to address those concerns—but many of them do. 

To try and—ahem—clear the air, Motherboard has created this glossary of key terms relating to how corporations and governments talk about reducing emissions. We have assembled this guide in the hopes that it will help all of us more critically evaluate the claims corporations make about their attempts to be environmentally responsible. 

To be clear, this is not a comprehensive guide to all important climate change-related terms. For that, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s glossary is a good place to start. Nor do we cover all aspects of greenwashing, which cover far more than emissions, including waste/recycling, water pollution, etc. But we have chosen to focus specifically on emissions-related terms here because they are among the most abused

There is a very clear, achievable, and direct path to significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions soon: Curb consumption, electrify everything, and clean up the grid with proven, cheap, renewable, zero-emission energy sources like wind and solar. The explanations of the terms below relate to how corporations delay, obscure, or otherwise obstruct that path, extending a decades-long trend of behavior that prioritizes profits ahead of the continued sustainability and habitation of this planet. 

What is a carbon footprint?

This term refers to the overall emissions an individual is responsible for in their day-to-day activities: Driving, shopping, flying, and other rudimentary actions all come with a certain environmental impact, and the concept aims to sum that up while holding individuals accountable for their own role in the climate crisis. While aiming to limit ones’ own consumption and contribution to a system that’s polluting our planet is noble, the idea of a carbon footprint is highly individualistic and places onus on the person to solve a global crisis, allowing large polluting sectors to skirt responsibility in turn. In fact, the term was popularized by oil giant British Petroleum (BP) in the early aughts as part of a marketing campaign crafted to redirect attention for solving climate change away from fossil fuel corporations; in 2004, the company worked with a public relations firm to launch a carbon footprint calculator to help the individual assess their own role in global warming. But as Rebecca Solnit writes for The Guardian, “The revolution won’t happen by people staying home and being good.” 77 percent of all emissions in the U.S. come directly from transportation (29 percent), electricity (25 percent), and fossil fuels and industries that rely on them to manufacture goods (23 percent), according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Slashing emissions at the scale required to slow the climate crisis will require systemic policy changes. 

What does carbon neutral, or carbon neutrality, mean?

Carbon Neutral, or carbon neutrality, is the goal often targeted by businesses, corporations, and governments in climate pledges. The basic concept is to measure an entity's carbon footprint, reduce that amount as much as possible, and purchase offsets for the emissions that can't be avoided. According to this logic, at that point, a corporation is theoretically not adding more carbon into the atmosphere. While auditing an entity's carbon footprint can be a helpful step towards reducing emissions simply because it forces the entity to realize where and when it is harming the planet, at this time the concept of carbon neutrality is only as viable as the offsets purchased.

A "CO2 NEUTRAL" FREEZER TRUCK. PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES

What are offsets?

In which a polluting entity pays someone else to do something that will in theory remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent carbon from being emitted that otherwise would have been. As the non-profit Climate Neutral, which certifies climate-neutral businesses, explains, such offsets have to meet six criteria in order to be certified by them: They must be "real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, enforceable, and additional." Once a broadly accepted tool in the CO2 reduction toolkit, offsets are now increasingly regarded as at best difficult to achieve in an unregulated, segmented market with varying standards and at worst outright scams. 

Even the most basic form of carbon offsets, like planting trees which naturally absorb CO2, is proving subject to complications or scam-like behavior. Trees planted in offset programs burn down in wildfires, releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere. Offsets can also be used in blatant greenwashing schemes, like when Shell, a major international oil company, declared it is planting trees in China to brand liquified natural gas as "carbon neutral." The green-branded fintech firm Aspiration sells a credit card that advertises customers can "Drive your car–without hurting the planet" because the company will purchase offsets for fuel purchases. And offsets create a fictitious market for carbon-intensive activities that otherwise wouldn't exist for the sole purpose of receiving offset funds. For example, the Massachusetts Audubon Society refrained from razing 9,700 acres of forest it preserves, thereby making $6 million from offset purchases to not do something it never intended to do. 

On balance, experts increasingly believe offset programs actually increase emissions. And some corporations are acknowledging this. Walmart declared a goal of zero emissions by 2040 "without relying on carbon offsets." One expert advised the Financial Times that, for the time being, offsets should be deemed "guilty until proven innocent."

What is carbon negative, and how is it different from carbon neutral?

Carbon Negative is the same as carbon neutral but offsets or other mitigation efforts to remove CO2 exceeds the emissions generated. Any claim today that an entity is carbon negative should be treated with utmost skepticism because carbon removal efforts like offsets are either experimental or speculative while the emissions they are designed to offset are definite and locked in.

What is net zero?

You might see this term used interchangeably with “carbon neutrality,” though it’s slightly broader, in that it encompasses emissions of all greenhouse gasses, like methane and nitrous oxide, not just carbon dioxide. Broadly, being “net zero” means that the emissions of a given entity have been matched by reductions over a slated period of time. Like carbon neutrality, the term is often used in government and corporate pledges, like the one the Biden Administration made to shrink national emissions by 2050.

But the term has also come under fire for being imprecise and a vehicle to excuse continued emission with what many environmental justice groups perceive to be false promises. Crucially, if a company has achieved net zero emissions, that does not mean that it is not emitting at all—hence, the common slogan, “net zero is not zero.” Rather, it is likely purchasing offsets that equal its emissions in volume, which, as we've learned, are not a sure thing. 

What are “green” and “blue” hydrogen?

Hydrogen is an element that exists in a number of compounds on earth—alcohols, petroleum, and hydrocarbon, but most prominently, in water, when combined with two oxygen atoms (H20—you’ve probably heard of this!) It’s the lightest of all gasses, and can be used as a fuel source; it’s most commonly produced from water molecules and distilled into a pure form via a process called hydrolysis, and from hydrocarbons, when separated from carbon molecules via steam. It’s an emissions-free energy source, emitting only water vapor and warm air when burned.

It’s gotten particular attention as a “clean” energy source as of late, from both fossil fuel companies and the Biden Administration, as a tool to meet emissions reduction goals. In June, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced her aim to reduce the price of the fuel by 80 percent by 2030; a few months later, the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan included several billion for research and development around hydrogen technology. “Clean hydrogen is a game changer,” Granholm said in a press release in June. “It will help decarbonize high-polluting heavy-duty and industrial sectors

But progressive environmental groups call bullshit, noting that most processes for producing hydrogen at scale require fossil fuels. Green hydrogen, specifically, is made with renewable energy sources, which would truly be emissions-free—but the industry for this is extremely small. Today, oil and gas companies produce nearly all of the country’s annual supply of hydrogen, according to non-profit environmental advocacy group EarthJustice. Hydrogen produced from fossil fuels is more commonly referred to as “blue hydrogen,” which is not a clean energy source, despite how much oil and gas companies want us to think it is. Transitioning from fossil fuels requires eliminating them from our energy palate entirely, environmentalists argue; investing in technologies that require them is antithetical to the goal of transitioning to an emission-free economy. 

What is carbon capture?

Carbon Capture, also called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), Carbon Capture and Storage, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS), and a number of similar terms and acronyms, broadly refer to any effort to take CO2 from the air, atmosphere, or polluting source and either put it back in Earth or re-use it. It is frequently touted as a promising and even necessary intervention to keep the planet from catastrophic warming. 

As humanity continues to fail at reducing global CO2 emissions at a level that will prevent catastrophic climate change, that failure makes technologies like carbon capture all the more necessary. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now considers such technology necessary to achieve net-zero or net-negative emissions. But the fact that the stakes for technology like carbon capture panning out are now so high doesn't guarantee they’ll work. To date, CCS facilities have several high-profile failures and few success stories. And the CO2 pulled from such facilities are often not returned to Earth at all but are used to extract more fossil fuels. Hundreds of environmental groups in the U.S. and Canada are opposed to the technology because it prolongs dependence on fossil fuels and the necessary infrastructure poses serious risks to nearby communities.

What is direct air capture?

Direct Air Capture (DAC) is a type of carbon dioxide removal. Instead of sucking the CO2 straight from a fossil fuel plant before it goes into the air, DAC is a standalone facility that takes CO2 from ambient air. The world's largest DAC plant is in Iceland. In one year it can remove the equivalent CO2 emissions of about 870 cars. DAC does not remove CO2 from the atmosphere and many questions remain about whether it can be scaled to have a meaningful impact on atmospheric CO2 levels as well as how to store the carbon safely for eternity. For these and other reasons, the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council said it would not support DAC efforts.

THE WORLD'S LARGEST DIRECT AIR CAPTURE PLANT IN ICELAND.                CREDIT: BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY

What does zero emission mean?

Often used in the context of electric vehicles, zero emission typically refers to the fact that fully electric vehicles do not have any direct tailpipe emissions, which improves air quality. But the term can be misleading by implying electric cars do not use fossil fuels. It is possible one day the U.S. energy grid will be 100 percent renewable energy using no fossil fuels whatsoever, but we are very far from that today. Electric cars use lots of electricity, and that electricity comes from a power grid that is currently a mixture of wind, solar, hydroelectric, and mostly fossil fuels. Electric vehicles generally use less energy and create fewer emissions than gas-powered cars. The Union of Concerned Scientists has a calculator for comparing the real-world emissions of an electric vehicle based on the energy source for any given zip code. While an electric vehicle is the cleaner option in nearly every case, it is only "zero emissions" in a very narrow sense.

What is biofuel, or biodiesel?

Biofuel, or biodiesel, is an energy source that comes from biomass, or organic, non-fossil matter, like dead leaves, trees, algae, municipal waste, corn, and cow shit, all of which have stored chemical energy. These materials are typically converted into a liquid fuel by being heated and deconstructed into a distilled form. It’s been lauded as a “bridge fuel” in the transition away from coal and oil and gas because it is a renewable resource. But converting biomass into fuel, and burning said fuel, comes with its own emissions, and in some scenarios, creates pollution that is worse for human health than burning coal. A large faction of the environmental movement believes that relying on bridge fuels only stalls the transition to carbon-free renewables, like wind and solar. One need look only at the history of other "bridge fuels," such as natural gas, to see the folly of such "bridge fuel" arguments. Today, natural gas is seen as a fuel source we need to phase out entirely. 

What is renewable energy?

Renewable energy is a catch-all term that describes any fuel source that comes from a “renewable” resource, or a resource that is naturally replenishing and that we have an endless store of, like wind, sun rays, water, and biomass (dead trees or organic matter, for example.) By contrast, “non-renewable” resources are those of which there is a limited supply on earth, like petroleum, gas, and coal produced from fossils and rock formations found deep underground. In general, renewable resources are more reliable long-term than non-renewable resources—it is better to use something that you have an exponential supply of than something you don’t. But renewable energy doesn’t automatically mean emission-free; geothermal energy, for example, emits small amounts of carbon dioxide, and as do the reservoirs of hydropower dams, which also release methane, a greenhouse gas that’s short-lived in the atmosphere but approximately 86 times more potent in its warming potential than CO2.

Corrections: This article previously cited a letter from environmental groups in the section about direct air capture. The letter is in opposition to carbon capture and sequestration. That sentence has been moved to the appropriate section. We also removed the term “Carbon Dioxide Removal” as a synonym for carbon capture.

Almost extinct in the US, powdered laundry detergents thrive elsewhere in the world

Powders aren’t growing as fast as liquids, but they still make up the majority of the industry’s volume

by Michael McCoy
January 27, 2019 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 97, Issue 4

What is hand sanitizer, and does it keep your hands germ-free?

Credit: Henkel
Responding to shifting consumer tastes, Henkel opened this liquid detergent plant in Poland last year.


Walk down the cleaning product aisle at a Target or Walmart store in any US city or town and you will encounter row upon gleaming row of stout, colorful bottles of liquid laundry detergent. Powdered detergents are relegated to a sad corner at the end of the aisle, if they can be found at all.

The scene is quite different at, say, the giant Idumota Market in Lagos, Nigeria. There, economical powdered detergents dominate. They come in sizes ranging from cheap single-use packets to multikilogram bags. In rural areas, powdered detergents are often sold out of large sacks by the cup to buyers who bring their own containers. Liquids are nowhere to be found.

These are the two ends of the global laundry detergent market. Consumers in the US, accustomed to liquids or newer unit-dose pod products, may not be aware that powders are alive and well in Africa, India, China, Latin America, and elsewhere in the developing world. Powders also persist in highly developed western European countries, where families prize them for their whitening ability.

Related: Periodic Graphics: Powder versus liquid detergents

Liquids, with their bold hues and connotations of upward mobility, are steadily taking market share from powders as standards of living improve around the world. Still, demand for powdered detergents continues to grow. Momentum may be on the side of liquid detergents, but for now liquids and powders coexist in laundry detergent markets around the globe.

David Cumming is associate R&D director for the North American fabric care business of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest detergent producers and by far the North American leader. He points to P&G research showing that liquids and powders are “neck and neck” in sales around the world. The firm reckons that they each have 40–45% market share by value, with pod products taking up the rest.

But by volume, powders lead comfortably. Some 14 million metric tons of powdered detergents were sold around the world last year, double the tonnage of liquids, according to the ingredient supplier Lubrizol. “Powdered detergents still dominate volume-wise, especially in emerging markets,” says Steven Carbone, the firm’s strategic marketing manager for fabric care.

Laundry detergents based on synthetic ingredients are a relatively recent innovation. For centuries until World War I, people washed their clothes with soaps that were made by saponifying fats and oils into fatty acid salts. P&G’s Ivory Snow was a popular US laundry soap.

German chemical companies developed an alkyl sulfate surfactant, a synthetic version of the fatty acid salts, during the war when Germany was unable to obtain the fats and oils needed for soap. After the war, P&G brought samples back to the US, recreated the surfactant in its labs, and in 1931 launched Dreft powder, the first synthetic detergent in the US.

Dreft was an improvement over soap, Cumming says, because it didn’t leave a scum on clothes washed in hard water, but it still didn’t clean heavily soiled clothes. “The breakthrough came when P&G scientists cracked the question of ‘How do I clean but also control hardness?’ ” he says. The answer was liberal amounts of sodium tripolyphosphate, a surfactant “builder” that helps remove soil.

Armed with the phosphate, P&G launched a new detergent, Tide, in 1946. It was a hit, and within a few years, P&G’s output of synthetic detergents was outstripping its soap production. By the early 1950s, Tide had captured more than 30% of the US laundry market, and it remains the best-selling detergent in the US today.

Although competitors launched liquids in the early years of the detergent era, P&G wasn’t confident to introduce a liquid Tide until 1984, Cumming says. “The elements of a detergent are easier to formulate in a powder,” he says. “You don’t have to worry about their inherent stability with each other because you can create discrete particles and then mix them together.”

Credit: Shutterstock


To shift to the liquid form, the firm’s researchers had to reexamine every ingredient: surfactants, enzymes, brighteners, and polymers that prevent the redeposition of suspended soil. “You have to make everything function in the wash but also be compatible with each other in a liquid form and be stable through manufacturing, storage, shelf life, and eventual consumer use,” Cumming says.

The elements of a detergent are easier to formulate in a powder.
David Cumming, associate R&D director for North American fabric care, Procter & Gamble

A challenge for sure, but P&G couldn’t ignore the appeal to consumers of a product that is easy to dispense, dissolves quickly, especially in cold water, and can be dabbed on to pretreat stains. No doubt the firm also considered the premium it could charge.

Since the 1980s, most R&D by detergent makers and their raw material suppliers has been directed at liquids. “When we’re out talking to our customers, it’s very dominated by the liquid space,” says Jena Kinney, head of consumer care in North America for the specialty chemical maker Clariant.

In part because of this difference in emphasis, liquids and powders have significantly different formulas today, explains Shoaib Arif, manager of applications and technical service at Pilot Chemical, a surfactant maker. “Powders were easy and economical,” Arif says. “Liquids are more technical. You need more chemistry knowledge.”

In powdered detergents, the main surfactant is linear alkylbenzene sulfonate. Known as LAS, it’s an inexpensive ingredient that, Kinney explains, is effective on dirt but less so on greasy or oily stains. In contrast, most liquids also contain alcohol ethoxylates, which are effective on challenging oily stains, she says.

Moreover, Arif says, liquids tend to include a broad range of surfactants, including LAS, alcohol ethoxylates, ether sulfates, and amine oxides. Some, such as amine oxides, which are effective on grease, are liquids themselves and can’t easily be formulated into a powder.

Packing all those surfactants into a liquid isn’t easy, Arif acknowledges, particularly in a concentrated formula. “In liquids the major issue is how to make these things compatible,” he says. “You must pick and choose the right surfactant category and structure.” Detergent makers often turn to viscosity control agents such as sodium xylene sulfonate, which Pilot sells as SXS-40.

Other ingredients present their own challenges in liquids. For enzymes to be stable, liquids must contain an additive like borax or calcium formate. And while formulators of powdered detergents can reduce soil redeposition by adding a simple acrylic homopolymer complexing agent, acrylics don’t blend well in liquids. Liquids rely instead on expensive complexing polymers like polyethyleneimine ethoxylate.

Finally, powders contain copious amounts of cheap builder. Phosphates were long ago removed from laundry detergents because they can promote excessive plant and algae growth in lakes and rivers, but powders still bristle with sodium carbonate and zeolites that tie up hard water ions like calcium and magnesium. To build liquid detergents, especially for hard water, formulators must turn to alternative builders, such as sodium citrate, and pump up surfactant levels.

The result, Arif says, is that liquids are quite effective but typically more expensive than powders. An analysis of US laundry detergents published last year by the Wirecutter, a consumer product testing service owned by the New York Times, chose Tide Ultra Stain Release liquid as the best product overall. The Tide variety was also among the most expensive detergents the service tested. Tide Plus Bleach powder was the Wirecutter’s top pick in years past, but it no longer makes the grade.

The situation is different in Germany, where a leading testing service, Stiftung Warentest, consistently ranks powders above liquids for heavy-duty cleaning of whites. In October 2018 the firm published a test of 18 powdered detergents and 5 liquid-containing pods. Its conclusion: bleach-based powders are markedly better than the pods, which occupied the last five places in the test.

The different conclusions of the US and German tests highlight differing wash conditions in the US and Europe as well as a key advantage of powders over liquids: the ability to add a bleaching agent.

Most premium powdered laundry detergents contain the oxygen-based bleach sodium percarbonate plus a chemical, usually tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED), that activates the bleach at low temperatures. Sodium percarbonate isn’t stable in liquid detergents, so formulators do their best to replicate its effect with enzymes and optical brighteners—additives such as disodium diaminostilbene disulfonate that makeclothes appear brighter by absorbing ultraviolet light and reemitting it in the blue region. The labels of such products often refer to “bleach alternative.”

Detergent powders sold in the US sometimes contain oxygenated bleach as well, but it’s in Europe where they are most effective because washing machines feature hotter and longer cycles than in the US. Those conditions yield noticeable whitening, says Joël Gény, market development manager for peroxides at Solvay, a leading producer of sodium percarbonate. “You can see a huge difference in cleaning performance.”

Thus, unlike in the US, where powders have all but disappeared, powders continue to command sizable market share in Germany and other European countries. Overall, according to Desmet Ballestra, an Italian designer and builder of chemical plants and detergent-making equipment, powders have a 30–35% market share in western Europe.

Even in Europe, though, the market share of powders is falling. Thomas Mueller-Kirschbaum, who heads R&D for laundry and home care at Henkel, a leading detergent maker, says the decline is roughly 4–5% per year. In eastern Europe, where powders are still in the majority, liquids are catching on as well, he notes. Last year Henkel added a liquid production line at its detergent plant in Racibórz, Poland, to meet growing customer demand in central and eastern Europe.

“People are wearing more dark clothes,” Mueller-Kirschbaum says, “not the typical white shirt or blouse of 20 years ago.” And while powders are good for whitening and removing dirt, liquids, he says, are better at tackling the “stains we always have with us—the bodily oils we cannot avoid.”

Unfortunately for firms like Solvay, about 60% of sodium percarbonate produced in Europe goes into laundry detergents. “Over the past 10 years it’s been a declining market,” Gény says. During that period, Solvay closed two percarbonate plants in Europe, and other firms closed at least three others.

Credit: Shutterstock

The cleaning process is really ingrained in individuals since their childhoods.
Jena Kinney, North American head of consumer care, Clariant


The decline is slowing, Gény says, and Solvay continues to invest in its plant in Germany. He sees potential for growth in the e-commerce market, where powdered detergents promise less risk of messy leaks during shipping. Yet, rather than turn to powders, both P&G and competitor Seventh Generation recently responded to pressure from Amazon with versions of their liquid detergents that are highly concentrated and packaged for sending through the mail.

Paul Baxter, global business development manager for home care and new markets at Lubrizol, is bullish on powders for a different reason. In 2015, Lubrizol acquired Warwick Chemicals, a Welsh firm that is the world’s largest producer of TAED, the bleach activator. About 90% of all TAED is used in laundry detergents and stand-alone bleaching products, Baxter says.

Related: Cleaning product makers clean up on growth

Baxter, a longtime Warwick executive, is realistic about global trends. “There has been a shift from powders to liquids,” he acknowledges. “But it’s a fairly slow shift. There’s still a very big powder market.”


In fact, Lubrizol sees the global powdered detergent market growing at about 2% annually as consumers in places like Africa and India acquire appliances and shift from hand to machine washing of clothes. And importantly for Lubrizol, most of the detergents consumed in the developing world are simple formulas that don’t contain bleach but could as people begin to demand more from their cleaning products. “We see that as our big opportunity,” Baxter says.

The selling point of bleach varies by region, Baxter notes. In the Middle East and North Africa, where white garments are popular, bleach can help detergent makers make whitening claims. In Asia, he says, detergent makers are interested in using bleach to make a “hygienic” claim. He points to research showing that more than 25% of new laundry products launched in Asia make a hygiene or sanitizing claim, versus less than 5% in North America and Europe.

“We realize we’re not going to get bleach into all laundry powders in Asia,” Baxter says, “but in top-tier brands, bleach ought to be essential.”

Moreover, Lubrizol sees an opportunity to spread the sanitizing message, particularly in regions where front-loading washing machines are popular.

On its website, the firm has posted a video demonstrating how using liquid detergents in front loaders can lead to microbial growth in the detergent-dispensing drawer and under the door’s rubber sealing ring. The problem is mostly eliminated by using a machine-cleaning product containing percarbonate and TAED and then washing clothes with a bleach-containing powdered detergent, according to tests summarized in the video.

Baxter is enthusiastic, but executives at Desmet Ballestra, which claims to have built two-thirds of the powdered laundry detergent plants around the world, are more measured in their view. They have been watching the detergent business for decades and are resigned about the slow shift to liquids.

Lately, the shift is particularly pronounced in Japan and South Korea, according to Corrado Mazzanti, the firm’s sales director for surfactants and detergents. “Ten years ago powders dominated,” he says. “Now they are 10–15%.” It’s also happening in Latin American countries like Brazil, where P&G spent $120 million in 2015 to build a liquid detergent plant and subsequently stopped selling powdered versions of its popular Ariel and Ace brands in the country.

Detergent company executives like P&G’s Cumming say investments in liquids are a response to consumer wishes, yet Mazzanti contends that big companies actively promote them because they are more profitable. “The cost of each wash done with liquids versus powders is much higher,” he says.

Still, Desmet Ballestra continues to build two or three powdered detergent plants a year. In October, for example, it announced plans to build one for the cleaning product maker Aspira in the Kano region of Nigeria.

Related: P&G and Henkel go head to head in the laundry aisle

And even in the most modern US cities, powders have their niches, particularly in neighborhoods where people may have grown up elsewhere. “The cleaning process is really ingrained in individuals since their childhoods,” Clariant’s Kinney notes.

Thus in the big Target store in downtown Brooklyn, New York, liquid detergents line the cleaning product aisle. But deeper in the borough, in a dollar store that serves a neighborhood with many Hispanic residents, one can still find bags of laundry powders, including P&G’s Ariel imported from Mexico. Powders may be down, but they’re not yet out.

Sticky-tape module designed to let robots know when floors are clean
By Ben Coxworth
September 24, 2021


A diagram of the module
Singapore University of Technology and Design

Increasingly, robots are being used to autonomously clean floors and other surfaces in places like airports and hospitals. You have to wonder, though … how do they know when a floor is sufficiently clean? A new module could soon tell them.

Currently in development at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, the unit includes a roll of white adhesive tape, a stepper motor which pulls out short lengths of that tape, a motorized spring-loaded "plunger" of sorts that presses down on the pulled tape, and a USB camera for visually examining the tape.

A robot utilizing the device starts by imaging a length of the tape in its clean, unused state. That same section of tape is subsequently pressed against the floor (sticky side down), then examined once again via the camera. By counting the number of pixels in which dirt particles are now visible (but that weren't there previously) the robot is able to assign a "dirt score" to that area of floor.

The bot can then clean and reassess that area repeatedly, until its score is satisfactory – the scoring scale ranges from 0 to 100, with 0 being the dirtiest and 100 being the cleanest.

There are some limitations that still need to be addressed, though. For one thing, floors with coarse textures tend to retain dirt particles, keeping them from sticking to the tape. The system may also falsely detect dirt when transitioning between sections of floor with different textures.

Down the road, it is hoped that the module will additionally be able to assess microbial density, so the robot will know whether or not the floor needs to be sterilized. The scientists are also developing algorithms that would allow cleaning robots to visually identify which areas of a floor are likely to be dirtiest, so they can receive the most attention.

A paper on the research, which is being led by PhD student Thejus Pathmakumar, was recently published in the journal Sensors.

DNA aids scientists in measuring the age of lobsters

By David Szondy
September 26, 2021

DNA can help determine the age of lobsters so fisheries can be better managed
YAYImages/Depositphotos

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have found a way to accurately measure the age of lobsters using changes in their DNA. The new study made in collaboration with the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) and the National Lobster Hatchery is aimed at producing a better understanding of lobster life cycles and better managing lobster fisheries.

A popular inhabitant of the dinner plate, the lobster is a very strange creature in many ways, which isn't surprising for an arthropod that diverged from the evolutionary lines that led to humans hundreds of millions of years ago. One major question is, how do lobsters age?

It's not an easy question to answer because the age of a lobster is very hard to determine. Partly, this is because lobsters have hard shells that they regularly molt to give themselves more room to grow, so the only thing left is soft tissue. The other is that, unlike many other animals, lobsters don't stop growing nor do they deteriorate with age. Instead, they seem to keep growing, don't weaken, and maintain fertility.

Exactly how long a lobster can live isn't certain. Some estimates put it at up to 100 years. Possibly, this may be due to an enzyme called telomerase, which repairs repetitive strings of DNA. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of hard data because of the lack of an age measuring stick.


A rough rule is to gauge a lobster's age by its size, but environmental factors can have a major effect on this. A well-fed lobster in warm water can end up much larger than a hungrier, colder one. In recent years, there have been advances in measuring lobster age using growth rings in the eye stalk and stomach, but this isn't practical with a live lobster.

Instead, the East Anglia team looked at measuring the changes in lobster DNA over time. Taking European lobsters of known age that had been raised from eggs, the researchers looked at how much ribosomal DNA (rDNA) in the claw tissue methylates, that is, transfers one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms (CH₃) during gene expression.

What they found was a strong correlation between the lobster's age and the rDNA changes. In addition, they could use this same DNA clock to estimate the age of wild lobsters. This is of much more than scientific interest. The world lobster market is worth well over US$5 billion, and since all lobsters are caught wild, the fisheries require careful management. However, much of their lives remain a mystery and knowing something as basic as their age could be a powerful tool in conserving stocks.


"It is crucial to be able to estimate how many lobsters of particular ages are present in a given area so that they can be sustainably harvested," says Dr. Eleanor Fairfield. "We wanted to develop a new, non-lethal method of determining the age of European lobsters that could be of better use for lobster fisheries management. The European lobster was an ideal species to study because it is economically and ecologically very important."

The research was published in Evolutionary Applications.

Source: University of East Anglia

Facebook acknowledges Instagram's damage to teen mental health, but says there's good stuff too

The good doesn't negate the bad, but it's still there, I guess.

By Amanda Yeo on September 27, 2021

Facebook admitted Instagram does make some teenagers' mental health worse, but claimed it improves others.

 Credit: Fabian Sommer/Picture Alliance Via Getty Images

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal published a report stating that Facebook's own in-house research revealed Instagram has a significant negative impact on teenagers' mental health. Now Facebook has responded, basically saying it's a matter of interpretation.

In a blog post published on Sunday afternoon, the social media giant claimed The Wall Street Journal's Sept. 14 article had mischaracterised Facebook's research, as well as left out important context.

"Suggesting that Instagram is toxic for teens is simply not backed up by the facts," wrote Facebook researcher Pratiti Raychoudhury.

On the face of it, the facts certainly look damning. The Wall Street Journal viewed several internal Facebook documents discussing the issue of teen mental health, the company having performed various focus groups and surveys between 2019 and 2021. Among the documents cited was a 2019 presentation on Instagram, which stated, "We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls."

However, Facebook alleges that in context this simply meant Instagram makes body image issues worse for girls who already have such issues, not one in three teen girls overall. This still isn't great by any means, but at least it isn't as bad as it could have been.

"And, among those same girls who said they were struggling with body image issues, 22% said that using Instagram made them feel better about their body image issues and 45.5% said that Instagram didn’t make it either better or worse (no impact)," wrote Raychoudhury.

Of course, Facebook doesn't state what percentage of teenage girls it surveyed self-reported having body image issues, which seems like a relevant bit of info. One in three of 30 percent is a much different statistic to one in three of 90 percent.

Facebook was unable to provide Mashable with this information when reached for comment, but a spokesperson stated not all surveyed girls who reported body image issues were asked about Instagram's impact.

Still, as the slide shared by Facebook indicates, more surveyed teen girls with body image issues thought Instagram made this problem worse than better. But Facebook also noted that Instagram was good at other things, with surveyed teens stating Instagram made other issues such as "sadness" better in situations where they had "felt sadness in the past month."


"Body image was the only area where teen girls who reported struggling with the issue said Instagram made it worse as compared to the other 11 areas," wrote Raychoudhury. "Our internal research is part of our effort to minimize the bad on our platforms and maximize the good. We invest in this research to proactively identify where we can improve — which is why the worst possible results are highlighted in the internal slides."

SEE ALSO: It shouldn’t be teen girls’ job to mitigate harm on Instagram

Facebook further addressed The Wall Street Journal's concerning revelation that the company's research found 6 percent of American and 13 percent of British teens who reported suicidal thoughts traced their origins to Instagram.

"When we take a step back and look at the full data set, about 1% of the entire group of teens who took the survey said they had suicidal thoughts that they felt started on Instagram," said Raychoudhury.

According to Facebook, 1296 American and 1309 British teens participated in the relevant survey, which means around 26 reported that their suicidal thoughts began on Instagram. The company acknowledged that any number above zero is not good, but also claimed 38 percent of surveyed teenage girls who experience suicidal thoughts stated Instagram makes the problem better for them.

Facebook's general defence to all of The Wall Street Journal's revelations basically boiled down to the good outweighing the bad, with more surveyed teens considering Instagram's impact to be positive than negative. The company also stressed that, in addition to contextual considerations of the data, their research itself should be put into context.

"This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram," wrote Raychoudhury. "These documents were also created for and used by people who understood the limitations of the research, which is why they occasionally used shorthand language, particularly in the headlines, and do not explain the caveats on every slide."

Facebook characterised its research as evidence the company is taking steps to tackle Instagram's problems, citing steps it's undertaken such as providing links to eating disorder hotlines, banning graphic images of self harm, and allowing users to limit interaction from non-followers.

"We have a long track record of using our research...to inform changes to our apps and provide resources for the people who use them," wrote Raychoudhury.

Sadly, implementation of said changes has historically been slow. Instagram only announced it would start linking to eating disorder hotlines in February this year, after being in operation for over a decade and knowing of the issue for almost as long. Facebook also has a history of downplaying or ignoring the potentially negative influences of its services — it is a trillion-dollar company, after all. But at least it's something, I guess.

If you feel like you’d like to talk to someone about your eating behavior, call the National Eating Disorder Association’s helpline at 800-931-2237. You can also text “NEDA” to 741-741 to be connected with a trained volunteer at the Crisis Text Line or visit the nonprofit’s website for more information.

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, Crisis Text Line provides free, confidential support 24/7. Text CRISIS to 741741 to be connected to a crisis counselor. Contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-NAMI, Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET, or email info@nami.org. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.